Simulated Interview For a Job at DC Comics

I had the typical career goals as an adolescent - pro sports, comic book artist, maybe some job where people inexplicably pay me to play great new video games. For comics, I was sure that if I could draw the main character perfectly (as in, just like in certain panels in the comics), then I'd be set and would basically be the guy drawing Batman comics. Now, I have a little more realistic view of how it would have gone when I showed up with my "perfect" Batman art looking for a job at DC....

Just flipping through an old Legends of the Dark Knight, there were about 30 unique people, 13 settings, and like 50 facial expressions/emotions to convey. In addition, I never did really master drawing Batman (see above), so I guess it's time to get practicing again....

Special Sauce

Here's my latest comic, as often as I read them I guess it's surprising I've never tried to do a whole 6 panel strip before. I've been reading a couple graphic novels lately like The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames and Fun House by Alison Bechdel where they write some of their experiences. Experience like homosexual experimentations, hard drugs, and pooping their pants. My story is a little tamer, it's based on a sandwich place I worked at in college, but if you want to assume the characters are having homosexual encounters, doing hard drugs, and pooping their pants behind the scenes, it will make it a little edgier.

Crime of the Month!!!!!

I live in a relatively small, college town, where most people would say "nothing much ever happens here". But lately the crime blotter in the local paper has been full of wacky, borderline retarded crimes instead of the usual 50 "minors caught with alcohol" offenses. It's only the 12th of May, but there are already some solid contenders for the coveted title of......"MOST RETARDED CRIME OF THE MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
There are a couple that are actually really tragic, like some deaths where the murderer only got 5 years in prison, but these 3 crimes were selected for MOST RETARDED CRIME OF THE MONTH based on the following criteria:
1) In the end, no one died
2) The perpetrators made one or more absolutely retarded decisions to get themselves in big time trouble.
And here are the nominees......I don't mean to judge before the courts have had their say, and everyone is innocent until proven guilty and all that, but I will be referring to the alleged perpetrators as "Bad Persons 1, 2, and 3".

Christmas at Grandma's House

Back from two weeks of hanging out at both sets of grandparent's houses. The comic above, titled "Christmas at Grandma's House" sums up the results of our trip, only we had two kids in the car swimming in the sea of presents. We brought clothes for a week, snacks, and about 10 presents for 10 people, most of which were the size of a DVD, and got about 4 garbage bags full of toys. The panels were originally side by side but that doesn't look good in a blog.

The greatest (Jack and Jill related) comic of all time!

 

So while I realize these crude sketches of the story of Jack and Jill going up the hill aren't very impressive, I basically just wanted to say that it is a fun exercise from the book "Drawing Words and Writing Pictures" by Abel and Madden. It's a very comprehensive book about creating comics, guiding you through organization, layout, character creation, and some comic-specific techniques like brush inking and lettering. It's not a how to draw superheros book, it's how to make a solid comic strip or book on any subject, even without mind-blowing art (yay!). It's got lots of homework assignments and challenges to do to get you involved, and even a website where it helps show some example critiques of people's work on these exercises, it's a very cool read for anyone who is into comics at all! Also good are DC's Guide to Inking/Coloring/Writing Comics, they are more geared toward hero comics and have good examples, but they're not as interactive as Drawing Words and they're spread out over several books.